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In speaking to several of my “traditionally” monogamous friends about my mono/poly relationship I have been repeatedly asked the same questions;

“What if your polyamorous Lover wants more from you and what if you want more from her”.

For clarity, I am in a polyamorous relationship considered essentially to be a “V”. My Lover is married and does have additional lovers besides me but the depth of those relationships is very different. For ease of establishing my place in our relationship I would be defined as her only “secondary”. She is Polyamorous and I am intimately monogamous meaning I intimately love and only share physical intimacy with one person.

Back on topic

To expand on their first question they are asking what would happen if my Lover decided she only wanted me, in a traditionally monogamous way.

The sheer thought of her “leaving” her husband to be with me scares me on two levels:

I have always been clear to both of them that I am here forever as long as I can handle the nature of a polyamorous relationship and as long as I am a positive influence in their entire life. I will not let myself have a negative impact on the family core I have been welcomed into. They are sacred. I will forcibly reshape my immense love for her into a platonic friendship that I can be comfortable with. Would this require a painful denial of my true feelings..ABSOLUTELY!! Would this hurt the woman I love…sadly of course..but we will always be together, of that I am sure as she is my best and most trusted friend.

Secondly, her nature is Polyamorous. I would be hard pressed to accept her complete happiness and that intimately loving me alone would fulfill her. I desperately want her to have everything no matter what the cost is to me. I would probably be in a constant state of apprehension and possibly suspicion. She would probably feel a constant need to aggressively affirm her fulfillment and happiness to me. I could not live like that and would not subject her to that either. We are intricately attuned to each others’ energy and know exactly when something is causing distress. That is the beauty and strength of our connection. We are essentially incapable of hiding things from each other which promotes a level of openness and trust I have not experienced before.

The next question is usually what would happen if I wanted her intimacy exclusively or in a traditional marriage sense.

What would happen if I wanted more of her in an exclusive way? I would communicate what was happening and pull back. I might be able to create enough distance to maintain our wonderful relationship or may have to reshape my love if I could not get a handle on my desire to “have her for myself”. I often get the “You’ll never have anyone for yourself” statement from my monogamous friends. Possession, as opposed to sharing, truly is a mis-manifestation of traditional monogamy. I don’t consider myself a traditional monogamous, but an intimate monogamous. Respectively, one relies on external rules and conditions; the other relies on internal wiring.

So do I fear becoming possessive in my relationship? Yes. But, I am aware of that potential and therefore am prepared to deal with it if it arises. I have no concern over becoming possessive in our relationship with the people involved currently. I do, however, fear a sense of possessiveness when considering the potential for her to develope new relationships with other men.

What keeps me grounded is the relationship my Lover has with her husband. He provides what I call a “safety”. Although I was in a traditional marriage for 16 years and no longer desire aspects of that, my traditional up bringing holds “marriage” in extremely high and sacred regards. It is this programming that aids me in having total compersion for the love my Lover has for her husband. Also, because I am not the primary focus of her intimate life, this in turn allows me to experience minimal jealousy towards her other lovers as well. In that sense I am completely thankful to the preconditioning I have grown up with!!

This is a new realization that should not have surprised me but was only brought to light recently. I was discussing an affair one of my friends had when he was 19. He was with an older married woman. He had no jealousy towards her husband but was very jealous and possessive when he found out she had other lovers. I could completely relate to his experience and began forming the basis of what prevents me from becoming possessive in my mono/poly relationship.

If her relationship with her husband changed and I became her primary intimate focus I would fear my protective nature, which is normally productive and caring, would be overshadowed by a possessive desire to keep her “all to myself”. This could lead to both of us feeling trapped which would destroy what we have. I have no doubt we would communicate about what was happening and either work through it or reshape our relationship. A life without her intimate love is not what my idea of the future holds…it kills me to even think about it.

Fortunately the openness and truth required to have our wonderful polyamorous relationship enables me to examine these feelings with my Lover. Again I find myself focussed on the positives of polyamory. I am happy to be in my Lovers life and family. The future excites me more than scares me…and that is the best feeling I can imagine

We are building something amazing. Redpepper's husband and me are forming a closer and closer bond. All of our communication is flowing freely and my love for her keeps growing. We all just got back from a concert..I am amazed at how natural and strong our "v" is .

I enjoy it when her son asks if I will be spending the night because he likes watching t.v. with me in the mornings. We are becoming a family...challenges are ahead but we are prepared to work for what we all want.
Take care.

Yeah, there is a lot of new territory to explore in poly relationships. We don't have a lot of movies, TV shows, books that show realistic (or romantisized) poly relationships. We constantly have to deal with a scrutinizing public who may be very disapproving of our choices.

Mono, I read your post and thought, wow, he's in a great place. Then I saw that the kids wanted to have you stay over because they like watching tv with you in the morning. THAT'S AWESOME!! Congrats on the success of your relationship. I wish you all the very best!

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Live life to the fullest 'cause you never know if you're gonna wake up tomorrow!